


wishful thinking

by viscrael



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Complicated Relationships, F/F, Getting Together, angela works out ?, but not rlly theyre just bad at communicating for a moment there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 09:39:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11438184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscrael/pseuds/viscrael
Summary: When she’s done, she wipes her mouth dry with the back of her hand, screws the cap back on her bottle, and leans over with her elbows on her knees and her head hanging low. She looks the same as she had in her office. Anxious. Confused.She says, “Fareeha.”“Hm?”“What are your intentions?”





	wishful thinking

**Author's Note:**

> uhhh its 3:46 am and i just spit this out real quick while my friend is passed out in my room n im left awake Olone
> 
> i just like the idea of angela working out/training for like. 1) self defense and 2) to help blow off steam. also bc i like the idea of her bein Fit n able to challenge fareeha in an arm wrestle lmAo 
> 
> im still struggling to write these girls in character but what else is new honestly

“Thank you again for doing this.”

“It’s not a problem,” Angela says, not looking up from where she’s rummaging through a cabinet in her office. Fareeha watches the older woman from her place on the examination table, holding a cloth in place and applying pressure the way she had been instructed to. The office is small—just the table, cabinets and drawers, a sink, and a scale pressed up against the wall take up the limited space, sunlight filtering in from the window across from Fareeha. This is the room Angela only uses for small injuries, things that don’t require her immediate and intense care. Broken bones, gunshot or stab wounds, and the like are taken care of elsewhere. Because of that, the room has a softer, less frantic feel about it that Fareeha can appreciate.

Angela’s high ponytail bobs as she comes off her tip-toes, evidently having found what she was searching for. She turns back around with a roll of gauze in one hand and an ice pack in the other and makes her way to Fareeha on the table, setting the items down next to her patient.

“Try to be more careful, though, won’t you?” she says, although she doesn’t look genuinely upset with Fareeha. She shoos Fareeha’s hand away from the cloth on her shoulder and hands her the ice pack instead.

“Sorry.” Fareeha takes the ice pack and presses it against the bruise on her left thigh, already turning an ugly color. “If it makes you feel any better, I wasn’t trying to get hurt.”

“Mhmm, I’m sure you weren’t. Lift your arm please.”

She does as instructed of her without further comment on her intentions, and Angela wraps the gauze around the large gash on Fareeha’s shoulder gently, careful not to upset the wound more. Her fingers brush against Fareeha’s skin as she pulls away, lingering on her bicep below the bandaging for longer than necessary. Or maybe Fareeha’s just imagining things.

“There,” she says, pulling away. “Good as new.”

“No kiss to make it better?” Fareeha asks with a teasing smile, only half joking.

“Maybe later.” She smiles back like there’s some secret between them. They only look at each other for a moment, Fareeha watching the upturn of Angela’s pink lips, the skillful hands settling on her waist, the way her blonde bangs frame her face so well. Angela is, for lack of a better word, angelic, and she knows that Fareeha thinks that of her. Fareeha has never been all that quiet about it, after all.

But the moment ends, and her face falls abruptly into a frown. She turns away from Fareeha, grabbing the bloodied cloth and throwing it in the trash can quickly. Fareeha frowns too, pressing the ice pack further into her thigh.

“Angela,” she says hesitantly. “Is something wrong?”

“Hm? Oh. Sorry, no, nothing’s wrong. I’m just…” With her back to Fareeha, her hand pauses over the cabinet’s handle. “Thinking about something. That’s all.”

That doesn’t stop Fareeha from worrying. She knows Angela well enough to know that when she’s “thinking about something” in that manner, it’s not usually good.

“If it’s about me getting hurt, I promise I won’t make a habit of it,” she offers. Fareeha had taken a pretty bad fall today. Her suit had started acting up during training due to some malfunctioning adjustments. No bones had been broken, but she’d gotten scraped up pretty badly, the worst being the gash on her shoulder and the bruises on her thigh and hip from where she’d landed. Her suit is with Torbjorn for the next few days while it’s being repaired.

“It’s…not that,” Angela answers gingerly. She sounds like she’s not sure how much to divulge, like she’s calculating in her head right now what will and will not worry Fareeha if she says it, and how much if it does. She’s like that a lot of the time—putting others’ worry above her own wellbeing. She’s the kind of person who would rather no one be worried about her and consequentially deal with her struggles alone, even if she needs help. It’s more than a little frustrating sometimes.

Fareeha takes in a deep breath. The pack is freezing against her bare thigh, her pants rolled up as far as they can be to leave her yellowing bruise visible, and she watches the plastic encasing the large chunk of ice crinkle under her hand when she clenches her fist over it. She debates over what to say as she listens to Angela clean up the rest of her mess, not only from this visit but from earlier in the day. Fareeha is not the first member of Overwatch to come to Angela today because they’d been injured doing, frankly, rather mundane things. Even in the downtime between Talon activity and other missions, Dr. Ziegler is needed.

“What is it, then?” she asks. Sensing the protest, she continues, “I don’t want to push you, but you know you can tell me if something’s bothering you. We’re friends, after all.”

Angela doesn’t respond to that. Her shoulders rise for a moment as if she’s taking a deep breath to speak—and then fall again, sagging even further than before. She closes the cabinet’s door quietly, and when she turns back around, she’s wearing an obviously forced smile.

“Thank you for the offer, but I’m fine. Really,” she lies.

 

\--

 

Fareeha finds her in the gym later that night. It’s nearing midnight, everyone else is asleep or pretending to be, and as she passes the gym’s window, Fareeha sees Angela going at a punching bag with everything she has.

She slips into the gym, conscious of the noise she’s making just in case someone else is wandering around at this time of night, and is immediately met with the sound of Angela’s fist pounding into the bag, small grunts and heavy breathing accompanying each impact. When she turns the corner into the room fully, Angela’s back is to her, her blonde ponytail swinging wildly with every punch. Even from here, Fareeha can see the sweat sticking Angela’s sports bra to her skin, sliding down her back and coating her. She must have been in here for a while before Fareeha discovered her.

Her original plan had been to say something to Angela once she pauses her assault on the bag, but Angela just keeps going, hardly stopping between punches. Her form is good if a little sloppy, Fareeha notes, and she realizes Angela is much more fit than she’d originally thought. Whether this is a new development or not, she doesn’t know. This is her first time seeing Angela wearing this little clothes.

It’s a good few minutes before Angela pauses enough for Fareeha to say anything. “Hey.”

“ _Jesus_!” Angela jumps, whipping around to face Fareeha in her surprise. She presses a hand to her chest when she recognizes who it is, as if to calm herself. “You scared me! How long have you been standing there?”

“A few minutes,” Fareeha admits. “I’m sorry. I tried to find a time to say something, but you were too, um, preoccupied for me to get a word in.”

“Ah. Yes.” Angela turns back around to face the punching bag, still swinging from her last hit on it. She looks embarrassed, her face pink—although that might only be from exertion, Fareeha thinks. “I apologize if I seemed…unapproachable.”

“You were busy, I understand.” Fareeha shifts her weight from one foot to the other where she stands. She’s still in her day clothes, since she was on her way to her dorm to change and sleep when she passed the gym, and she shoves one hand into her pants’ front pocket, her thumb sticking out. “Do you do this often? Work out while everyone else is asleep, I mean?”

Angela looks between the punching bag and Fareeha, her mouth open to respond but no sound coming out. She opens and closes her mouth a few more times before settling on a reply. “Sometimes,” she says. “Not…very often.”

“I see.”

She laughs, the sound soft and a little awkward. There’s a bench pressed against the glass wall of the gym, and she makes her way to it, sitting down and picking up a water bottle on the floor. As she unscrews the cap, she says, “I’m sorry. This is probably a little weird for you.”

Fareeha sits down next to Angela on the bench, careful to leave space between their thighs. Her own still hurts from the bruise. “What? Why would you think this is weird for me?”

“Because I’m a pacifist,” Angela says. “And…this is somewhat of a…secret, I suppose. It’s not that I’m actively trying to keep everyone from knowing that I’ve been… _training_ , but, well…”

“It’s not information you offer up, either,” Fareeha finishes. Angela nods. “Well, don’t worry about it. It’s not weird. Self-defense is important, after all. And I won’t mention it to any of the others if you don’t want me to.”

It looks like Angela wants to say something else, but she only nods again in thanks and takes a long drink from her bottle. Fareeha watches her profile—the pale expanse of her neck as she tips her head back, the way her throat bobs when she swallows, the mole just below her chin. She still has her earrings in, and the small diamonds glint under the fluorescent lights.

When she’s done, she wipes her mouth dry with the back of her hand, screws the cap back on her bottle, and leans over with her elbows on her knees and her head hanging low. She looks the same as she had in her office. Anxious. Confused.

She says, “Fareeha.”

“Hm?”

“What are your intentions?”

Fareeha’s eyebrows shoot up. “My intentions? For…what, being here this late?”

“No, no.” Angela shakes her head. She isn’t looking at Fareeha, focused on the ground and her sneakers-clad feet. “For…” She trails off.

There’s silence. Fareeha looks down too and says, “Angela. What do you mean, my ‘intentions’?”

“I _mean_ —“ Angela starts, then stops just as suddenly, snapping her mouth shut. She tries and fails again, “We aren’t…Just. Earlier, when you came into my office…”

“Yes?” She isn’t making much sense. Fareeha knows her concern is evident in her expression, knows her eyebrows are knitted and her frown clear.

Angela sighs heavily, her shoulders sagging even more. “Your intentions when you flirt with me. What are they?”

Whatever Fareeha had been expecting her to say, that is not it. She blinks, then shifts on the bench, unsure for a moment what to say. “Oh. Um. I like you.”

“I’ve gotten that much,” Angela sorts of laughs. “But _after_ that.”

She thinks about it for a long moment. Angela waits in silence, glancing from the corner of her eye at Fareeha. “I don’t know,” Fareeha confesses finally. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead, I guess. Is that what was upsetting you earlier today?”

Angela shrugs. “I wasn’t…upset. I just realized that I don’t quite know what we are. And I wasn’t sure that I liked that I didn’t know.”

“Did it worry you?”

“I guess it did,” she admits. “I’ve never _not_ known with someone. And in our situation, it is…best, to know. At least that’s what I think.”

Fareeha doesn’t need to be told to know that _our situation_ is referring to their status as members of an illegal organization fighting a notorious terrorist group. It’s true that they’re in more danger than the average citizen, and that everyone sort of views that as a reason for living their life to the fullest.

But Fareeha had not really known until now that Angela was even considering her when she flirts. Of course she’d had her hopes and of course she’d picked up on it when Angela flirted back, but she’d assumed it wasn’t serious, or that it was more of a pity response than anything. The two of them are friends— _good_ friends. They’re close. She had convinced herself that, on the off chance that Angela _was_ interested in her too, she wouldn’t want to date because it would make things even more complicated between them, and it’d ruin the positive, close relationship they’ve had for so long.

“Well,” Fareeha says, running a hand through her short hair nervously. She can feel Angela’s eyes on her now, attention fully focused on her. “For one, I like you. But considering how obvious I am, you already knew that.”

Angela nods. “Yes, your flirting did make that apparent.”

“But I always thought you were more annoyed with my flirting than anything,” she continues. “So, I hadn’t realized until now honestly that _you_ even considered us something. But my intentions—I think I’d like to go out on a date, if you’d want to.”

“Hold on.” Angela sits up, looking incredulously at Fareeha. When she moves, their legs brush against each other. “You thought I was annoyed with you?”

“Well, yeah,” Fareeha says. “That’s what I’d assumed…”

“Fareeha. I’ve been flirting back for _months_.”

“In my defense, at the time it seemed far-fetched and like I was only projecting. You know I’ve liked you since I was a teenager, don’t you? You have to understand I assumed any interest you showed back was just wishful thinking,” she rushes to explain herself, although she knows how silly it sounds even as she says it.

Angela stares at her for a moment—and then laughs. This one is clear, and there is no awkward or anxious undertone to it, nothing forced about it. She throws her head back, laughing with her whole body, and Fareeha finds herself laughing too. The sound echoes in the otherwise empty gym.

“I suppose hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Angela says once she’s calmed down. She turns on the bench so she’s facing Fareeha better, body language open and a pleasant smile on her face.

“I suppose,” Fareeha agrees.

The smile turns into a grin, a teasing glint in her blue eyes. She bumps her shoulder into Fareeh’s gently, the shoulder that isn’t still wrapped in gauze and healing, and she’s warm, ridiculously warm. “So it seems you want to go on a date sometime?”

“That’s news to nobody,” Fareeha says, and bumps Angela gently back. “And you?”

“I think I would like that.” She smiles wider.

 

\--

 

They walk to their dorms together, but Fareeha reaches hers first. As they're parting at the doorway, Angela says, “Goodnight, Fareeha.”

“Goodnight, Angela.”

“Sweet dreams.”

And, just before leaving, she puts a hand on Fareeha’s shoulder softly and presses a kiss to her cheek. She pulls away smiling.

“Sweet dreams,” Fareeha says to her retreating form, and falls asleep quickly that night.


End file.
